


Blood and Copper Oxide

by Banach_Tarski



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alien Technology, Angst, Attempted Kidnapping, Bickering, Dysfunctional Family, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Horror Elements, Humor, I took canon kissed it on the forehead and left it on the side of the freeway, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Luke Skywalker Needs A Hug, Minor Injuries, Snow, Whump, after esb, ancient civilisations, enemies to family, post bespin, talking about your emotions, they're gonna have to work together, uwu Luke is dead long live feral Luke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29215161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Banach_Tarski/pseuds/Banach_Tarski
Summary: Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader crash land on a planet that shouldn't have existed.Luke can't escape Vader and survive the planet at the same time.Darth Vader can't capture Luke and fight off the innumerable threats the planet sends his way.They might have to work together instead.
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader
Comments: 34
Kudos: 155





	1. Chapter 1

There wasn’t meant to be a planet here.

Not that Luke’s complaining, of course, because stumbling upon a planet to get lost on would be a kriffing miracle right now. Luke spirals his X-Wing up, around, and down behind the TIE Fighter tailing him and chases them instead. See how they like it.

The TIE Fighter performs a textbook evasive manoeuvre that Luke sees coming from a parsec away, and Luke blasts it to bits. Good riddance.

Luke twirls away from another TIE Fighter and _woah_ that was a little close to _The Executor_. The Force screams at him and Luke rapidly puts some distance between him and the Dreadnaught, careful to stay out of range of the tractor beam. He’s got to keep these TIE Fighters distracted, not sacrifice himself to the Imperials.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity, the last of his X-Wing squadron disappears into hyperspace. And not a moment too soon, because the empty void of space around him is rapidly filling with TIE Fighters, far more than Luke can handle. But that’s okay, the planet that’s appeared below him will aid in his escape. All he needs to do is get lost in its swirling clouds and prepare to jump on the opposite side of the thing. The Imperials will never know which way he went.

With infinite directions to choose from, there aren’t enough TIE Fighters in the Empire to watch them all.

Luke weaves between a TIE Fighter’s wings almost close enough to scrape them and descends towards the planet.

“What’s the atmosphere like, Artoo?” Luke asks.

Artoo beeps in response.

“Snowy? Good, the TIE Fighters won’t last long in conditions like that.”

Artoo beeps again, high and shrill.

“Yeah, neither will the X-Wing. Don’t worry about it.”

Luke dives lower, the upper reaches of the planet’s atmosphere turning space’s inky blackness into a dark grey. There is no star here to light up the thin clouds; only the occasional flash of TIE Fighter laser fire, which lights up the vapour like a lightning strike.

As Luke descends, the grey encompassing more and more of his vision, the TIE Fighter fire halts abruptly.

“They’re giving up so easily?” Luke turns around to grin at his astromech. “We’ll be back at base in-“

A cold prickling sensation encroaches on the edge of his mind.

Luke’s smile falls off his face.

Frowning, Luke reinforces the walls around his mind. He’d been so _careful_ , surely he hadn’t let them slip during the fight with the TIE Fighters…?

Artoo beeps a warning and Luke watches a TIE Advanced appear behind him on his sensors. Luke allows himself three seconds to swear in a long stream of Huttese before shutting up and focusing again.

It was a moot point, whether or not his mental shields had been strong enough. That TIE Advanced was on his tail now and there was only one pilot determined enough to follow him through the turbulent clouds in an unknown planet’s atmosphere. One pilot that could, and had, hunted him to the edge of the galaxy and back.

Darth Vader, his father.

“Of course it’s never that easy,” Luke grits out and accelerates towards the planet’s surface in a dead drop.

Luke could still lose Vader. He’d done it before. The TIE Advanced wasn’t _that_ much more advanced than the classic Fighter. And Luke was a much better pilot than he’d been during the Battle of Yavin, years ago now. Surely with Artoo and the Force Luke could outfly him?

And the Force sang to him now, deep and rich and clear, almost hypnotic, urging him towards the planet. Luke shuts his eyes and listens, right up to the point where it suddenly cuts out and Luke pulls himself out of the dive scant metres before hitting the surface.

The G-forces would have killed an ordinary pilot. Fortunately for Luke, he’s no ordinary pilot.

He opens his eyes to an almost pitch-black mountain range, covered in a slightly lighter layer of snow. Squinting a little, he navigates around a series of snow-covered crags and lists to the left behind a particularly large outcropping of rocks.

A spike of ice stabs into his mind, and Luke gasps aloud. His X-Wing slices into the top of a pillar of snow and sends it careening into the dark abyss below, leaving a trail of dust and snowflakes in the air leading right to Luke’s position.

Luke swears again and wraps his shields tighter around himself. He can’t let Vader distract him. He can’t afford to make mistakes here.

He wishes, abruptly, that he could send the same mental attacks back at Vader. Right now it feels like he’s fighting two battles at once and he’s only armed for one. But the middle of a high speed chase is not the time to start learning.

His X-Wing sings as Luke accelerates through a tight formation of snowy spires. He’s barely making them out of the gloom before racing past them, eager to put as much dirt and ice between his thrusters and Vader’s cannons as he can. The faster he loses line of sight, the better.

Luke dives under a frozen overhang and narrowly avoids a massive icicle in his path. There’s a long enough moment of pause between it and the next icicle for Luke to focus on his targeting equipment and he sees Vader is gaining on him. A few well timed shots from the TIE Advanced shatters an icicle in front of him and Luke yells and drops into another dive, skimming along the long slope of the mountain and away. There is one bare moment where Luke can catch his breath before the sharp spikes of rock and ice on the mountainside rush up to meet him again and it’s all Luke can do to keep from crashing into one.

Vader is right behind him. Luke’s not outflying him like this.

There’s a crevice between two pillars of rock and snow and Luke powers his thrusters towards it. He senses it forms a tunnel he can use to get behind Vader’s TIE Advanced. If he’s fast enough, and Vader doesn’t try to get into his head again, he knows he can take Vader by surprise.

Sweat trickles down past his eye and gets caught on the contours of his nose. He doesn’t have a free hand to reach under his helmet and wipe it away. He takes a deep breath and lets the Force guide his flight.

Artoo beeps another warning at him but Luke doesn’t reply. Luke tilts his X-Wing on its side and slides between the pillars, close enough to the ice if he looks up he knows he’ll see his reflection on the walls. The tunnel narrows, narrows, and narrows again-

-And he’s through. Looking behind him, there’s a slight smattering of snow on Artoo’s head before it is blown away by the wind.

He’s still looking back in time to see the end of the tunnel explode outwards in a flurry of ice and laser fire, and Luke’s heart sinks into his boots.

Before the snow clears, Luke pulls up and away over the TIE Advanced. He executes a neat turn and the TIE Advanced sends a barrage of red plasma into Luke’s engines.

Luke can’t believe it. How? How had Vader turned his TIE Advanced around so quickly?

Artoo screams a warning at Luke as the ship jolts in the air. Luke narrowly avoids smashing his skull into the instrument panel. The hit turned his X-Wing around slightly, and now he’s falling towards Vader’s TIE Advanced, which rushes up to meet him.

There is really only one thing left to do before he falls out of the sky in a far less controlled manner than his first plunge to the planet’s surface. Luke unleashes all four of his X-Wing’s laser cannons on the TIE Advanced below him and the lasers light up the snow like a red sun.

Luke is rewarded with a pleasing explosion on the TIE Advanced’s left wing as it turns away at the last second to avoid a collision.

That’s all he sees before his X-Wing rattles past it, soars for a few seconds more, and then crashes into a snow drift further down the mountain.

* * *

Luke isn’t knocked out by the crash landing, but it takes him several minutes to muster the courage to move. His chest aches where the crash netting held him in place, and his left hand throbs where he banged it into navigation system. His right hand feels as it always does, which is not much, considering it is made of durasteel. Luke rips the crash netting away from his chest and heaves a few gasps of cold air.

“You alright there, Artoo?”

Artoo beeps low and slow, irritated.

“Yeah, I feel the same way. Is this atmosphere breathable?”

Artoo trills an affirmative.

“Right, then. I’m gonna see if I can get us up and running again before Vader figures out where we crashed. It didn’t feel like we were hit too bad.”

Luke opens the cockpit and grimaces against the wave of cold that envelopes him. At least it’s a regular, non-malignant kind of cold that leaves his mind very much alone. Luke pulls himself out of the X-Wing with no minor effort and stands over Artoo, surveying his surroundings.

Snow. Snow and icy pillars of stone, sloping down and away into each other in a complex tangle Luke is sure nature spent hundreds of years weaving, if not thousands. The landscape is dotted with large holes not unlike the crevice Luke flew through just a few minutes ago, and now that Luke’s night vision’s had a few minutes to adjust, he notices they are more angular and regular than one would think nature would craft.

“It’s all snow, Artoo. You’ll have to stay here.”

Artoo’s head swivels around and he makes an agreeing beep.

“Can you give me a status on the engine?”

Artoo clicks and whirrs away.

“Just some melted deflectors and some minor damage to the engine shielding? I can have that fixed in no time.”

It took a very skilled pilot to disable a ship instead of wrecking it. Luke wonders if piloting skills can be inherited. Or maybe it isn’t piloting skills- it’s reflexes and aptitude for the Force that can be inherited. Can you inherit skill with a lightsabre? What about shielding?

Can you inherit the pull of the Dark Side?

Luke shakes the thought away. Vader would be coming for him, and he needed to leave before that happened. Luke hadn’t been nearly as gentle with his own attack on Vader’s ship. Hopefully the damage to Vader’s TIE would keep him out of action long enough for Luke to fix the damage to his own craft.

And before he gives it any more thought, Luke jumps off the X-Wing to the snow below.

The snow immediately gives way under his intrusion and Luke finds himself plummeting inside a particularly large crevice. A sharp cry of panic worms its way out between his shields while he’s airborne, and it convulses into a stab of pain when he lands on something hard. The snow provides no padding, and Luke pulls himself to his feet with a growl and a shake of his head.

He twisted his ankle slightly upon landing, but after stumbling a few steps through the light snow, it feels safe enough to walk on. Luke pushes through the snowfall and stands for a moment in the dark. He shakes the snow out of his hair and brushes both away from his eyes.

Great. Just, great.

There’s just enough light coming through the hole he fell through to see the pile of snow on the ground, and the tip of his X-Wing silhouetted against the grey sky. The ground is… flatter than he would have expected from a hole in the side of a mountain. Luke kicks some of the snow away with his good foot and spots an indent in the ground. He kicks a few more times, with purpose, and frees the indent from its icy grave.

It’s a carving of a flame.

Luke kneels down and traces the indent in the stone with his right hand. There is a faint scraping sound, but it doesn’t sound like metal on rock.

It sounded more like metal on metal. Fine durasteel against rusted, tarnished metal, but still.

A freezing gust of wind tickles the back of Luke’s neck, and he turns around and follows it sightlessly. It takes him around a pillar of ice and opens out into a broad view of the mountain.

Luke looks out over it, and the Force sings with comprehension.

“This isn’t a mountain,” Luke says to himself, or maybe to the Force. “Somebody made this. This is a building.”

He narrows his eyes at the spires of ice and snow. Through the gentle flurry that falls around him, he makes out curves and sharp, regular edges. The spires are regularly placed and have angular sides, and gently sloping bridges connect them. Taller spires with grand jutting elements stand proud over quaint little ones arranged in neat rows. The open space in front of him, Luke feels, has a giant circle carved into the middle of it, and snow covered pathways lead away between the spires.

They’re not pillars of rock. They’re metal buildings.

“This is a city.”

A different kind of coldness tickles the back of Luke’s brain. He glances up and back, high above him.

Standing as dark against the grey clouds as the night sky, Darth Vader stares down at him.

Luke grabs his lightsabre and looks back up at Vader, but he’s vanished.

“Kriff,” Luke tells the city, and darts back inside the alcove he fell into. Heart hammering away in his chest like it’s trying to cave it open and escape, Luke drags himself away from the opening and heads the other way, deeper into the city. He senses there’s a lot more happening inside the city than on its surface. The structure did initially present itself as a mountain, after all. The Force sings him deeper and Luke follows like a fish on a lure.

It would be like a maze down there, and he has to find somewhere to hide. Somewhere he can wait until… what? Vader gives up and moves along? That won’t happen, not in a million years. How under the twin suns, then, is he ever going to-

Luke forces himself back from the edge of panic, and his gaze darts to the pile of snow behind him. The gentle snowfall has already covered most of the evidence of his landing. He walks back to it, only a slight limp in his step.

Maybe the solution isn’t to hide deeper in the bowels of the city. Maybe he should go out into the elements, where the snowfall will cover his tracks. That’s the last thing Vader will suspect. Luke’s only dressed in his flight suit but he’s not feeling the cold with all the adrenaline pumping through his system.

And maybe the Force can keep him warm. Luke doesn’t know to do that, but as soon as he forms the thought it feels right.

Luke takes another moment to centre himself and inspects his mental shields. He can’t let panic and fear slip through them like he himself did the snow. They must be as sturdy and as slippery as the ice around him if he’s going to avoid Vader. Luke runs his flesh hand over some ice sloping down a wall next to him. Feels its solid weight and the curve of it down into parts unknown. In his mind, he envisions ice in the shape of a sand dune, impossible to climb. He can practically feel the lines of it, run his fingers through the light smattering snow dusting the surface, the chill working its way to his bones. Luke hardens the imagery at the forefront of his thoughts and he senses the Force sliding around him and through him just the same.

Right. That’s better.

Luke takes off along the surface of the city, the Force clenched tightly in his grip, his footsteps as weightless as any other snowflake landing on the blanket of snow.

* * *

Drifting down a pathway snug between a collection of tall and thin buildings, Luke notices there’s not a single lifeform around. The Force rings empty and hollow in Luke’s chest.

Of course, they may be shielding themselves as well as Luke knows Vader is, but he judges that unlikely. The city feels… old. Weathered mostly by nature, rather than by foot traffic. Obviously someone was here once, but Luke finds it impossible to determine who. None of the structures look like any of the civilisations Luke’s visited in the known galaxy. The ice is metres thick in some places, and the corners of the buildings look eroded by the wind. Maybe nobody’s been here in thousands of years.

Luke’s still keeping a careful eye out. There’s no reason for the event at Hoth to happen again.

Luke takes a moment to imagine what the city would look like in proper daylight, with two suns hanging overhead. Snow and ice mean water, so he runs a river through a convenient divot that already parallels the path. But the image doesn’t quite sit right, the Force ringing in a minor key, so Luke abandons it.

The path opens up into a grand courtyard and the buildings retreat to a safe distance along the perimeter. Irregular monuments, heavily diminished by the wind and inclement weather, dot the space like a garden of sculptures. Which might be exactly what they are, because they don’t seem to serve any practical purpose. But some of them are gorgeous in a grand, old kind of way.

Luke approaches the closest one to him, a carving that looks remarkably like a hooded figure, and brushes some snow off the figure’s hand.

“Are you protecting this courtyard?” Luke asks the figure. There’s an identical one on the other side of the path, and Luke spots a few more pairs of them where other paths connect to the space. “I don’t suppose you could extend that to me as well?”

The wind picks up, and it brings with it another smattering of snow. Luke is getting colder the further through the city he moves. Gradually, he’s getting lower, but that isn’t revealing to him any more signs of life.

Maybe it was a mistake to head this way. Maybe he should have gone deeper into the city instead of walking the surface streets. Certainly he should have told Artoo what his plans were, but Luke wouldn’t risk the time it would take to climb back up to him. But he’s certainly missing the emergency supplies in his X-Wing, the little heater, ration packs, and medical supplies tucked away somewhere. The constant snow and his aching bones are wearing on him.

It might be time to bunker down in one of the buildings and meditate for a while.

A clump of wet snow slops off the figure’s hand and slaps onto the metal courtyard floor. Luke raises an eyebrow at it and wipes some snow off his own hand. Weird the heat from his hand would melt the snow off the statue but not his own hand.

Another clump of snow falls off the figure and Luke sees the fingers of its hand twitch.

Luke leaps backwards so fast he carves a deep ditch in the snow around him.

Hand on his lightsabre, Luke watches with wide eyes as more snow melts off the figure and it rises to its full height. And its hands begin to glow.

The figure is easily three metres tall and it snaps out a glowing hand in an instant. Luke twists away, lightsabre igniting, but he feels the heat of it through his flight suit. The hand glows red hot and the crusty metal coating it falls away, revealing smooth pink-orange metal beneath. The figure shakes its shoulders and the rest of the snow and tarnished metal hit the courtyard. Steam billows up around it before it is torn away by the wind.

It doesn’t have a face. Luke leaps backwards again as it lunges forwards with both hands.

Luke pushes off a different, more abstract sculpture, and takes a swing at the figure’s hand. Maybe the thing is made of some kind of metal, but Luke’s lightsabre is plasma. It can cut through anything.

The green blade does cut through the hand, but the metal melts around it and the lightsabre moves as if through tar. Luke deactivates the blade to free it from the figure’s grasp and dances backwards again.

“Sithspit,” Luke spits under his breath. “Yeah, great kriffing planet to get lost on. Why do I have to think things like that?”

Luke crouches low and strafes around the figure, the Force lending him speed. With a swipe, he takes off the edge of the figure’s cloak and the metal falls to the floor with a clatter that Luke feels reverberate through his teeth.

“So it’s only your molten, glowy hands I have to worry about,” Luke tells the figure. The green glow of his saber illuminates the completely blank face beneath the robe, and the figure lunges again. Luke jumps back but the goal was not to grab Luke. Red hot droplets of molten metal fling off the figure’s fingers and Luke hisses in pain when a few connect with his flesh hand and one glances across the side of his skull. The smell of his own burned hair makes Luke wrinkle his nose.

Hand throbbing in time with his heartbeat, Luke nevertheless raises it and wards off the next wave of molten metal with a weary gesture. There isn’t a single part of him that isn’t in pain and it’s making it hard to use the Force. He can’t afford to keep dancing around the figure looking for an opening. He was tired before the fight started. He needs to end this quickly.

Luke holds his hand out to the sculpture behind him. It’s a twisting thing that reminds him of a tree trunk, complete with sweeping metal branches. Luke rips it from its supports and levitates it high above the figure. Once it’s in position, Luke lets go, and gravity does the rest of the work.

The figure crumples in on itself, a few drops of metal escaping and cooling in the snow but the vast majority of cloak and hands crunch down into something unrecognisable.

It does not move again.

The strain of using the Force for something so heavy rolls over Luke like a wave and he collapses to his hands and knees. Bright afterimages from his lightsabre and the glowing hands dance in front of his vision, and he blinks them away while he tries to catch his breath.

There’s slow breathing in his ears, but Luke doesn’t understand why his heaving lungs don’t match up with the sound until it is too late.

Luke stops breathing and whirls around.

The only way Luke can make him out from the gloom, with so many afterimages clouding his vision, is by the blinking lights on his chestplate. That, and the coldness of his presence he no longer hides in the Force, something deeper and darker than a frosty planet so far away from any star.

Darth Vader stands before him.

Luke reactivates his lightsabre. Vader, under the deep green glow, stands like a spectre in the dead city.

Luke feels the weight of his gaze like it is coated in ice, and it drags him down.

After a few seconds of staring, Vader tilts his helmet.

“You’ve grown stronger, young one.”

The vocoder’s voice is colder than the stare.

Luke points his lightsabre at Vader, his flesh hand only trembling slightly. Whether it’s the cold, exhaustion, or fear, Luke doesn’t know. He doesn’t particularly care. The only important thing right now is stopping Vader from coming any closer.

“Stay _away_ from me!” Luke shouts. A few snowflakes intersect with his lightsabre and vanish as tiny points of steam.

“Your lightsabre light makes you easy to follow.” Vader extends a gloved hand towards Luke. “Come, now. There is nowhere else to run.”

“I’m not going with you,” Luke snarls. He takes a step away from Vader and holds his lightsabre a little higher.

“I do not wish to fight you,” Vader breathes through three deep cycles, “but I am not asking for your permission.”

Luke crouches low and runs his lightsabre through the snow in a wide, flat arc, and then he’s off running in the other direction. A great swell of steam rises off the snow and Luke wastes no time using it for cover, shutting his lightsabre off to hide its glow and disappearing between the sculptures.

Luke doesn’t want to fight Vader either, but he was wrong about there being nowhere else to run. There is plenty of city left to race through, half blind from the dark and the snow and the steam, the Force the only thing stopping Luke from falling into a snowdrift.

If he was having such a hard time navigating the terrain, Vader must be having a worse one. A particularly tall sculpture had collapsed into a couple of others and scattered the metal components across the ground, so Luke scrambles over it to give Vader the hardest time following him.

The Force screams a warning, and Luke dives to the left to avoid a chunk of metal flying at him. It narrowly misses his shoulder and connects with a nearby sculpture with a shriek.

Breathing hard, Luke grabs the chunk with the Force and hurls it back to the direction it came in. A red streak flashes behind him – Vader cut through the metal with his own lightsabre.

Another flash, and the very same lightsabre flies through the air over Luke’s head. It slices through a sculpture and sends the top of it crashing to the ground in front of Luke. He pulls up sharply, feet skidding in the snow, and turns to his right.

The way is blocked by a huge snowdrift. By the time Luke turns to his left, Vader has already twisted a sculpture into falling across the opening.

With nowhere else to turn, Luke reignites his lightsabre and faces Vader.

Vader’s own lightsabre flies back into his hand and he walks forwards with even, patient steps.

Luke meets him in the middle with a shout, and their blades connect with a searing yellow glow.

Vader is strong, stronger than Luke, and Luke has to grit his teeth to avoid falling back under the weight of Vader’s blade. He slides Vader’s blade down and away and attacks in earnest.

Parry, parry. Vader blocks every one of Luke’s attacks. The roar of clashing plasma fills the courtyard with a light and energy not seen here for thousands of years, and the sculptures themselves seem to lean in with anticipation. Steam whips around Luke and Vader as their sabers collide with the snow, rendering each figure a blur.

Luke fights with every shred of skill and power he can muster, but he’s tired. Exhausted, from the crash and his trek through the city, and then the fight with the metal figure. Vader forces him back one step, and then another, and another until Luke feels a sculpture brush against back.

With a grunt, Luke uses the Force to push Vader away and Vader slides back against the snow, hunched over and reeling.

Just as Luke raises his lightsabre high to bring it crashing down, a protrusion from the sculpture behind him bends and wraps around his wrist. For a moment he panics that it has come to life like the hooded figure but he sees Vader’s outstretched hand, and he knows Vader was right.

There really was nowhere else to run.

Luke’s lightsabre flies out of his hand and into Vader’s waiting one. Vader attaches it to his belt.

“You fight as well as any Jedi Knight,” Vader tells him as he approaches, deactivating his own lightsabre. “But you are still outmatched by a Sith.”

Luke’s free hand scrambles at the metal holding his other one above his head. “Let me go!”

“Cease your pointless fight, my son. Join me and-”

Luke growls and uses to the Force to bring _Vader’s_ lightsabre to his free hand. It flies away from Vader’s grip but stops abruptly in the air. Luke strains, sweat pouring from his face, but the saber moves no closer.

Vader stands with his hand outstretched, a mirror to Luke’s. The lightsabre vibrates in place, thrumming with energy.

Luke gives it his all, in his last attempt to protect himself.

The lightsabre twists and turns, and with a roar from the Force, breaks apart.

The recoil of Luke’s pull with the Force sends him flat against the sculpture behind him while all the snow in the immediate area flies off and away. Dimly, he senses something similar happening to Vader. Loose pieces of metal and ice scatter haphazardly into the distance and the very air pushes away for half a second.

But then it passes, and the air rushes back into place, bringing with it all the wind and snow that should have landed. Luke slumps as low as his restraint will allow him, his weight hanging from his wrist.

He’s spent. He doesn’t have enough energy to stand on his own two feet at the moment.

Vader grunts, or makes a similar enough noise through his vocoder, and staggers to his feet. Luke is faintly aware of him picking up the lightsabre pieces before his shadow falls directly over Luke.

“You will live to regret that,” Vader warns. With a brief flare of the Force Luke’s arm is free, and Vader is quick to twist it behind his back and lock both wrists behind him in a pair of binders.

Vader has to haul him up to keep him upright. “Walk.”

Slowly, and with Vader’s hand locked tight around his arm, Luke walks. It’s a stumbling, sliding walk but Luke musters the strength to move. He has little choice. There’s a terrifying, howling anger emanating from Vader, and Luke wonders why the snow around them isn’t melting from the sheer force of it.

But Vader seems to be holding himself in check, and as Luke probes, under the anger there is a glow of satisfaction. Even a thread of pride weaving through Vader’s emotions. It makes sense. The first thing Vader told him once they met on this awful planet was that he was growing stronger. Luke doesn’t have the energy to probe further.

After a minute of walking, Luke starts to shiver.

By the time they make it most of the way back, Luke is a trembling mess. Vader stops them for a moment and Luke is about ready to keel over into the snow. But Vader’s grip hauls him back up and Luke looks to catch what has caught Vader’s attention.

Two of the hooded figures are waiting for them just outside the group of sculptures, their hands glowing white hot. Vader turns around and Luke spots another two hooded figures joining them.

Kriff. Luke had activated one by touching it. How many would a powerful Force explosion activate?

Instinctively he backs into Vader, who looks down at him.

“Your stunt with my lightsabre has attracted unwanted attention.” Vader says, vocoder somehow dry and clipped. His arm drops away from Luke and Luke stumbles a few steps before leaning against a sculpture. It’s freezing cold, but Luke barely feels it. “I will deal with this. Do not try to run.”

With that, Vader activates Luke’s lightsabre and strides towards the first pair of hooded figures.


	2. Chapter 2

Of course, as soon as Vader engages with the first figure Luke makes a run for it.

It’s more of a lurching stagger but Luke will take what he can get. He moves perpendicular to the action, flashes of green and sparks of gold turning the field of sculptures into a forest of twisting shadows- just for a moment or two. The ground appears to bank and roll beneath him and it’s enough to send Luke to his knees.

Luke climbs back to his feet. Not an easy task with his hands bound behind his back but there is no other choice. Not if he wants to escape Vader.

Between him and the planet, the planet is the lesser of the two evils.

Luke makes it out of the courtyard without encountering any of the hooded figures. There’s a path leading down and away from the action behind him, and Luke stumbles down it like salvation will greet him at the end.

It doesn’t, but it does lead to a building that looks particularly protected from the elements. Luke collapses through the doorway and drags himself out of sight.

Breathing heavily, Luke pulls himself up against one rusty wall. He’s ended up about half a klick from the courtyard, which is in his opinion not far enough at all, but he physically can’t drag himself any further. It takes what’s left of his willpower to simply keep his eyes open and he knows if he passes out or falls asleep now, he’ll never wake up.

At least he’s still shivering. Hoth taught him that’s a good thing. Within a few minutes the tracks he left will be covered in snow, and despite his current exhaustion, his mental shields are as strong as ever. Vader will have a hard time tracking him down.

That buys him enough time to… well, there’s not much left for him to do. Eventually he’ll have to make his way back to his X-Wing or he’ll freeze to death no matter what. The smart thing for Vader to do will be to wait for him there. If he manages to fight off all those hooded figures, that is.

Luke manages to huff a laugh. Of course he will. The real question is how many of them Luke activated, and if all of them are fighting Vader right now. The two that should have been guarding the path Luke escaped down weren’t there, and come to think of it there were a few suspicious drag marks in the snow during his escape…

There’s really no way to tell how many figures Luke activated. Getting back to his X-Wing might be harder than just surviving the elements. And having his hands bound behind his back certainly doesn’t make things easier.

Groaning slightly, Luke leans forwards. There is still one thing he can do.

Luke’s managed to slip binders with the Force before, but thinking about using the Force with that level of focus and precision right now hurts. Luckily, there is another way.

Luke flexes the fingers of his metal hand and twists his thumb a certain way. He brings his left hand around to gently probe the thumb, numb fingertips feeling for some small groove he knows exists but just can’t navigate to.

With another minute of careful fumbling, Luke finds the groove and jams his nail into it. The thumb pops off with a light _clunk_ that makes Luke wince, but half a second later he can slip the binder off that hand and bring both his hands around to his front.

“Ah, that’s much better,” Luke shakes feeling back into his flesh hand before returning his right thumb to its proper place. It snaps into place and Luke tests the joint, ensuring it still works perfectly.

It does. Excellent. Luke wouldn’t exactly say he was grateful to have a mechanical hand right now, but it certainly had its benefits.

One problem solved, about a hundred million to go. Luke takes a deep breath of cold air and centres himself.

Even with his reluctance to use the Force, he can still hear it calling out to him. That same, steady pressure for him to venture deeper into the city’s underground, away from what little light persists through the atmosphere from nearby stars, still calls to him. There is something down there waiting for him. Something in the dark.

Luke brings his legs up and curls his arms around them. As he does, the open binder clinks against something metallic on his belt.

Right, he has a few tools with him. On him are a couple of implements to fix his hand, identification (both real and fake) written on some flimsy, a pocket chronometer, and a small glowrod. Luke bemoans his lack of lightsabre. Since Vader has it, he’ll probably never see it again. He could really use a source of heat and light right about now.

But the glowrod could prove useful. Maybe he could head a little way underground and sneak around Vader to his X-Wing. Better yet, if Vader was waiting for him there, Luke could go to Vader’s TIE Advanced and see if there was anything useful there instead.

It was a good plan, as long as he didn’t run into any hooded figures on the way. With no lightsabre and no Force, he would be a sitting mynock.

But it was this or turn himself in to Vader. Luke pulls himself back to his feet with a grunt and stumbles further into the darkness. The short rest had done him some good, and he felt well enough to move again.

Even without conscious use of it, the Force whispers to Luke which way to walk. It takes almost no energy to listen, after all, and Luke lets it lead him deep into the city. Once Luke is certain the light won’t be visible from the surface, he activates his glowrod.

It shines with a cold white light. Luke slips around a cascade of ice and runs his hand over a wall.

It’s green? No, turquoise. Either way, he isn’t expecting it. The surface is rough and raised areas catch on his fingertips. No wonder he thought it was rock earlier.

The further he descends, the less ice and snow he has to navigate around. He’s stopped shivering as well, and he’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not. The space around him changes too- what were rusty rooms and long, winding passages slowly change into something more streamlined, more pointed. The walls smooth out and it’s no longer unpleasant to run his fingers along them. Whatever’s down here is far more protected from the elements than what’s on the surface.

He sees that same fire carving as well along the walls. Must be a decorative pattern. The civilisation that was once here certainly had a flair for the dramatic, what with their sweeping spires and sculpture gardens, and now delicately carved corridors. Luke’s never seen anything like it. It’s certainly the antithesis to the Empire’s aesthetic, which favours simple, smooth, but large shapes.

Crouching down and looking closer, Luke makes out tiny streams of that pinkish metal running through the cracks in the wall in a delicate weave. He moves to trace along one of them with a fingertip but retracts it sharply.

The metal is hot. Luke could barely feel it at first through his numb fingertips but when he reaches out again it’s apparent.

What under the twin suns could possibly be heating this metal? Was it a wire of some sort, conducting power?

Did it have anything to do with the activation of the hooded figures, or was this already in operation long before Luke arrived on the planet?

The whispers from the Force reach a crescendo and die away again.

Luke pouts.

The Force reacted to something he thought, but he couldn’t be sure what. Would it kill the Force to be a little more direct sometimes?

Still, if this part of the underground was active and heating up, it would be a good idea to find somewhere warm and meditate for a while. Perhaps the Force’s message would grow clearer once he was calm and focused. That would also make it the first time it did, but Luke was, if anything, an optimist.

He would rest up, escape Vader’s clutches, and figure out a way off this planet.

A new skip in his step, Luke allows the whispers of the Force to guide him deeper.

As he walks, the air grows warmer and warmer. The rooms open up suddenly into a much larger tunnel and hot air hits Luke with enough force to blow his hair back. It’s impossible to see the other side of the tunnel, let alone the end, so it would feel like Luke was standing on the precipice of some great darkness if he couldn’t sense the tunnel’s dimensions. As it is, the meagre light from his glowrod illuminates about a metre in each direction, and Luke is left feeling hopelessly exposed.

What he wouldn’t give for his lightsabre right now. Kriff, Luke would give his other hand for a blaster at this point. The hooded figures are completely inorganic and Luke can’t sense them with the Force. One could be right next to him and he wouldn’t know until it rested a burning hand on his shoulder.

The thought tickles the back of his neck and Luke cranes his head around sharply down the length of the tunnel, where the hot air originates.

No, as much as the Force sings for him to go down that way, he has a bad feeling about it. Besides, that way leads too deep into the city and Luke needs to stick somewhat close to the surface if he has a hope of getting to the TIE Advanced.

With certain footsteps, Luke crosses the width of the tunnel and up a staircase, instinctively sure of where to put his feet. The staircase takes him into a narrow but tall corridor, and the space is significantly more cluttered than the empty rooms he’d navigated earlier.

It’s all still old and tarnished metal, but it’s the first real evidence that there was actually someone doing something here before. From the very little that Luke can see, and by what he trips over, this place is some sort of maintenance corridor. Barrels of metal line the walls and loose, mechanical piles of parts spill out of them. Other containers sit half full of something else, rotted or rusted away into obscurity, but it’s comforting to know that the entire planet isn’t made of the singular metal. Supports stick out of the walls where Luke imagines glowrods could sit and light the place.

And through an archway off to one side, something grabs Luke’s attention.

It’s a room filled with low tables cluttered with junk. But on one of the tables, the shape of some of the junk reminds Luke of something he’s intimately familiar with. The pattern of indents and ridges, the lines of metal that probably provide power, the stick out the top that could be an antenna.

It’s a water vaporator.

What sort of use could a planet covered in snow have of a vaporator?

It’s baffling to Luke, but he supposes planets can change in the thousands of years since someone last lived on it. Luke places his glowrod unthinkingly in one of the supports by the entrance and jumps when the whole room lights up. There’s other, less familiar junk in various states of decay and repair but Luke’s drawn to the vaporator.

Somehow, a little piece of home’s made its way here, in some shape or form. Luke sits up on the table and leans his back against the ancient machine, resting his head on the rusted turquoise metal.

It’s warm down here, almost comfortingly hot. Maybe he should stay here for a bit and rest a while. This would make a good place to meditate and find his strength again, since he doesn’t have to worry about freezing to death right now. He can almost imagine that he’s just finished fixing the vaporator behind him, and he’s on Tatooine again, and he has a while until Aunt Beru calls him in for dinner.

Luke shuts his eyes, thinks of home, and breathes deep.

* * *

This goes swimmingly for about an hour until the Force screeches sharp and discordant in Luke’s ear, and he throws himself to the side. Something smashes into the vaporator with enough power to topple it right off the table. Luke knows exactly how much power that takes, after the worst sandstorm in living memory passed over the farm about a decade ago and knocked over half the vaporators. It had taken months to get them all back to a working standard.

Luke puts the table between him and the thing attacking him and goes for the lightsabre at his side, except it isn’t there.

Oh yeah. At least the Force sings through him now with a vibrant pulse of energy. Something about this planet makes the Force feel closer and easier to channel, or maybe it just feels that way because Luke’s had an hour to recuperate.

The thing lunges for Luke again and he flips backwards onto the table behind him. It’s a hooded figure- or more accurately, half of one. It looks like something bisected it from its shoulder diagonally downwards. Luke sees the scrape marks on the floor where it dragged itself over to him, only one hand and foot to move it.

The figure lacks a head.

Luke bites back his fear and dives behind the table. There is no question of defeating it- even with his Force powers back to some extent, there is no room to manoeuvre and no time to focus. Luke’s only thoughts are of escaping.

The figure is blocking the entrance right now, its bisected metal form still a formidable presence in the archway. If he can lure it somewhere else, it should be easy to run from.

It’s got one leg. He’s got two. He doesn’t need Artoo to run the calculations for him.

Luke sticks his head out from one side of the table. The figure whirls around and lunges for him, grabbing the table and sending it skidding against a distant wall.

How it spots Luke without a head he’ll never know. But the movement with the table gives Luke enough time to draw upon the Force and send it screaming out of him, wrenching the half figure off its foot and it ploughs into a barrel of spare parts. The noise of scraping metal makes Luke press his hands to his ears while the spare parts clatter to the floor around him.

Before the half figure can right itself, Luke sprints for the archway back to the maintenance corridor.

A hand wraps around his ankle with a vice-like grip and _yanks_.

Luke smashes his side into a table and falls to the floor. Before he can get a grip on a table leg, a spare part, anything, the hand whips him around and he slides across the floor into another table.

The floor is coated in a fine dusting of metal fragments and is of a similar texture to sandpaper. It tears through his flight suit as if it were flimsy. His skin burns where it makes contact.

Luke puts his hands under him to help himself up but the hand isn’t finished with him. It sweeps him back across the floor and Luke grits his teeth as his hands are shredded along with the rest of him.

He comes face to face with the thing dragging him along the floor.

It’s the other _kriffing_ half of the hooded figure.

It sits too broken to move on a shelf under a table, but it has enough mobility in its arm left to throw him around like a ragdoll. Luke manages to grab a spare part with the Force, a shard of metal or something, and he whips it at the hooded figure’s head. The metal impales itself inside the hood.

The figure throws Luke clear across the room.

Luke smacks into the far wall and all the breath is forced out of him. Gasping for air, Luke watches as the first half of the hooded figure works its way out of the pile of scraps and crawls towards him. Luke’s feet kick out as he scrambles away from it, knocking over piles of rusted metal and forgotten things.

Something next to him on the ground grabs at his belt. Luke looks down at it and bites back a cry.

It’s a hooded figure’s hand. Not attached to anything, just a hand. And it claws at his side like it’s trying to rip him to shreds, and there are _more_ of them, under him, and he feels them wake up and _grab him_ -

-And the first half of the hooded figure draws near, the awful scrape of rusty metal on metal growing louder and louder in his ears in an uncontrollable din-

Winded, without the breath to call out with his voice, Luke calls out instead with his mind.

_Father!_

* * *

The green lightsabre flies back into his outstretched, black-gloved hand. The last figure takes another lumbering step towards him, unconcerned over the massive glowing wound in its side.

Darth Vader brings his hands together, then rips them apart. The two halves of the last figure follow suit.

Red hot droplets of metal fling across the courtyard in an arc of light. The metal splashes harmlessly against other pieces of the figure’s fallen allies. Darth Vader leans over and nudges a head, still faintly glowing red hot where he removed it from its body a few minutes before, and inspects the contents.

The head is empty, save for a swirl of copper that probably functions as its wiring. It would bring Vader no small satisfaction to bring one of these figures, which he’s decided are best called sentinels, back to _The Executor_ and rip their secrets out of them one piece at a time.

But he has more pressing matters to attend to.

His son had taken the one, scant chance of escape and run away with it. Quite literally, much to Vader’s annoyance. It had been difficult enough tracking him down the first time and Vader wasn’t looking forward to the challenge again. Luke’s ability to shield his mind from unwanted attention had grown immensely, and it was only with a keen eye that Vader had spotted the light from his fight with the first sentinel.

Luke had fought admirably, and he fought even better against Vader. That desperation, that determination, that self-righteous fury at being hunted down, it would serve him well. All he needed was someone to show him how to use it properly.

Vader’s hand goes to his belt, and he checks the pieces of his lightsabre are still secure.

Luke would need someone to teach him proper _respect_ as well. Who had taught his son? There was nothing of Kenobi in the way he held himself. His son fought well but there was no finery in his movements, no elegance. There was a wildness to his actions, something primal and powerful Vader knew would be difficult to tame. Even Luke himself seemed to struggle with it, and at some points during their fight Vader wasn’t sure if Luke used the Force or if the Force used him.

It was just another problem his son threw his way.

A vision of a snake wraps around Vader’s foot, accompanied by the heavy smell of a swamp. In the distance something howls, long and dangerous, before it peters out into a croaky laugh. Vader shakes the vision away and focuses his attention on the blood-red crystal in amongst the metal pieces of his lightsabre.

At least by some miracle, or more likely the will of the Force, Vader’s kyber crystal remained undamaged. With some tools and enough time, he might be able to fix his lightsabre. His son’s lightsabre suffices for now but the green glow brings back memories he’d rather avoid.

Vader reaches out with the Force, his presence sliding between the old buildings and winding down the pathways. He drapes his senses like a shroud over everything until it feels like he’s seeped into all the nooks and crannies of the surrounding area.

But Luke is nowhere to be found. There is only the wind, the snow, the metal, and the persistent pull of the planet luring him deeper into its depths. The city hums a low and quiet promise that what he seeks is down, down, down, but Vader has more important things to worry about than some ancient call from the Force.

Perhaps once Luke is safely in his grasp, he could return. But until Luke is contained, he would have to press on.

His thoughts distract him from a slowly building warning through the Force and he darts away a second too late from a sentinel clawing at him. It’s the one he tore apart, its top half raking red hot fingers across his front.

He saves his life support panel from the deadly heat but the fingers tear through his leg instead. The burn is a hot flash of pain along his thigh, which is easy to ignore, but the strike continues down through his knee and he hears the metal joint rend.

Luke’s lightsabre flashes out in an instant and the fingers are rendered into slag. The rest of the sentinel half quickly follows.

A wave of his hand sends the remaining sentinel scraps skidding away from him. The sentinels are sturdier than he expected.

They certainly don’t build droids like this anymore. Although it might be fairer to call the sentinels automations instead, considering their antiquity. They don’t appear to have the processing modern droids do. Simple creations, designed to react to touch or movement or something similar.

Still, Vader would much rather fight a modern droid than another sentinel. Where’s a good battle droid when you need one? When was the last time he fought a droideka?

Vader makes a mental note to add shields to the next batch of practice duelling droids he goes through.

But he is getting distracted again. Luke is somewhere in the city, exhausted, restrained, and exposed to the elements. He would try to make his way back to his X-Wing.

Vader would meet him there.

The trek back up the slope of the city is not pleasant. It takes a careful and constant application of the Force to keep his leg moving and the snow falls thicker than ever.

At least the city is still. There is no sign of a single sentinel, active or as still as stone.

It takes him half an hour to ascend to the X-Wing’s position. Once he cleaves a path to its side, he stops short.

A very familiar droid spins its head around to dislodge a small pile of snow, and glares at Vader.

He knows that look. There’s only one droid in the galaxy that can glare at him with only a camera for a face.

Artoo whistles an insult that could get him arrested and decommissioned in three systems.

Vader bites back a cutting reply and levels a finger at the droid.

“ _You_. Are you in contact with Luke Skywalker?”

Artoo beeps a negative.

“What damage is done to the ship?”

Artoo hurls another insult his way and Vader takes a threatening step towards him. The droid changes his tune and relays a damage report.

The damage is minimal, just as Vader intended. Vader allows a small sweeping satisfaction to wash away some of his irritation. There was very little chance Luke would have been harmed by his attack. Artoo has even already fixed the melted deflector plates.

Just as importantly, the communications array was in working order and now was an opportune time to send a message back to _The Executor_. Luke had not been so careful with his own attack on Vader’s TIE Advanced. Vader had only just managed to alight his doomed craft before it hurtled into the mountainside. Needless to say, the communications array was non-functional. The last instruction he’d left _The Executor_ was to wait for his next signal, and now he wanted to request a shuttle and some Stormtroopers. Maybe a medic as well.

A quick burst of the Force set Vader down in the cockpit and he set to work on the communications array, tapping here and there. After a minute or two it became apparent no signal was getting through this storm. Too much interference in the atmosphere. He’d have to wait for the storm to pass.

Artoo titters away, whistling as he follows Vader’s attempts to contact _The Executor_. Vader has half a mind to tear him to shreds but he might still prove useful.

Vader looms over Artoo and holds out a hand. In it is the external casing of his lightsabre. It’s dinted and charred, but its most worrying characteristic is the tear in the metal running a good halfway along its body. Vader holds his other hand over it and, with a concentrated effort, bends the jagged tears together with the Force until they form a flat plane.

“Repair this,” Vader instructs, “or I will do to you what happened to my lightsabre.”

Artoo trills in disapproval but he activates a small welding tool from his body and gets to work. Within a few minutes the casing is whole once more.

Vader runs his thumb over one end of the casing, removing a char mark. It will suffice. Now all he needs is a quiet, safe place to work on the minor repairs the lightsabre needs, and a steady and careful application of the Force, and his lightsabre will work as it should.

One problem solved, about a hundred million to go. But that was always the case, wasn’t it, with his son. Things tended to compound and grow out of hand. A simple dogfight in deep space resulted in both of their strandings on a wandering planet covered in ancient enemies. Vader shouldn’t have been surprised.

And there was also the planet’s ties to the Force to consider as well. It had no particular pull to the Light or Dark, and the lack of lifeforms around left a sombre and empty echo in the Force, but there was still something… magnetic, about the place. Something calling him deeper. Older, perhaps, than the divide between Light and Dark.

A few races throughout known history had harnessed the Force in a multitude of different ways, and it was likely the original inhabitants of this planet were no different. In a different time, in a different place, Vader would wager a fair number of credits there was a temple to the Force somewhere deep inside the mountain city. And the idea was enticing, drawing him closer, even now with his son at the forefront of his mind. Perhaps it was more than sheer chance that drew both of them to this place, at this time.

Vader wonders if Luke feels the pull as well.

Luke, who has still failed to make an appearance here even though there should have been more than enough time for him to make his way back. Luke, who Vader left exhausted and alone on a planet of snow. And Vader had even taken his lightsabre and left him with nothing to defend himself against the sentinels.

Luke, who would have rather died than join him at Bespin.

Vader is a fool.

There was no chance Luke would come and meet Vader at his X-Wing. He was probably holed up in one of those icy, ragged buildings further down the mountain, frozen half to death at this point. Or he’d attracted the attention of a sentinel and fled deeper into the pitch black heart of the city for protection.

Without Luke lowering his shields, Vader would have no way of knowing where he was until it was too late.

Cursing to himself, Vader spreads his awareness out as far as it will reach. His presence plunges down through the twisting tunnels and crumbling spires, drips like ink though ancient cracks and narrow spaces until he feels himself more like a sentinel than human, like his heart and soul are made of the same metal, and he stands watching eternal over the city just as they do.

There is a flicker in the Force.

So there _is_ something alive down there. The Force presence is tiny, likely the result of moss or lichen, but it proves the planet isn’t entirely desolate. Conditions must be more hospitable further in.

This opens up a third option. Maybe Luke went that way.

It was time to explore the deep underbelly of the city.

Just before he departs, small echoing tone from the Force sends Vader hunting around the back of the cockpit. A bag sticks out from a recess and Vader grabs it and inspects the contents.

It’s filled with emergency supplies. Tools to repair the X-Wing, a couple of oxygen tanks, a flare pistol, a portable heater, and more, all sit ready and waiting for the right emergency. Vader discards most of it offhand but he sees a medical kit and some ration bars, and the Force whispers something melancholic at him until he picks them up.

Vader closes the cockpit of the X-Wing behind him and points a gloved finger back at Artoo.

“Endeavour to send my communication to _The Executor_. Skywalker’s survival may depend on it.”

Artoo gives his equivalent of a sigh and acquiesces.

With that, Vader jumps off the X-Wing onto a solid patch of compacted snow, except it isn’t a solid patch of compacted snow, it’s a hole covered by a thin layer of freshly fallen snowflakes and he plummets through the large crevice and into a large pile of loose snow below.

Artoo whistles loudly above, laughing his head off, and Vader longs to crush the entire X-Wing just to stop the noise.

Instead, he pulls himself to his feet and brushes the worst of the snow off his shoulders. He doesn’t have time for this. Luke needs to be found, as soon as possible, and Vader can’t waste his strength destroying what is probably his only chance at getting a message through to _The Executor_.

A presence taps against his mind, panicked but clear like someone rapped a tuning fork against his mental shields.

He knows this presence. It’s so clear, and bright, and sings with such a pure tone Vader can’t help but use it as a measure to compare against everything else. Is there anything else in the galaxy that radiates so much light and warmth?

It’s Luke.

_Father!_ Luke calls, and Vader stops dead in his tracks.

Vader drops his shields and the glowing sun in the Force that is Luke slides up against his mind. Their bond, withered from disuse, strengthens into a durasteel connection that Vader is loath to let deteriorate again. Vader clutches at the connection like his life depends on it.

_Luke? Where are you?_

A trickle of panic runs through the bond, then steely resolve. A scene throws itself in front of Vader’s eyes.

He sees a dark corridor of corroded copper and an archway with a little light shining through. The top half of a sentinel crawls out from the light, and Luke’s terror spikes. There’s scrambling at his arms and legs and he sees disembodied hands dig into his limbs, dragging him down, catching on the walls and floor, slowing his scramble away from the sentinel and it heaves itself almost within reach-

Vader shrugs the vision, and the memory of the clawing hands, away and ignites Luke’s lightsabre. Their bond tugs his eyes down, down into the city and he knows where his eyes rest, Luke is fighting for his life.

Vader sees it clear as day. Half a second later, Vader is exploding away from the pile of snow and leaping out into the open air, the speed of his motion rendering the snow behind him into vapour, the Force billowing and dark and lashing out around him.

_I’m coming, Luke._

Vader receives a spark of panic and pain in reply.

The city appears to fly by below him. There’s no time to navigate the twisting maze of corridors and hallways he senses on and below the city’s surface; the most direct path is above it. Vader’s leap takes him between two spires, and he reaches out to catch the side of one and slide a short way down it. He kicks off it, damaged knee joint protesting loudly all the while, and with a renewed burst from the Force he hurtles along on a slightly altered trajectory. Vaguely in the background, over the roar of rushing wind and snow, he hears the spire topple and collapse in the wake of his propulsion.

Two, three, four more similar leaps take him directly above Luke’s location. There’s a staircase covered in ice leading down and Vader skids down it, the Force holding him steady. Once he reaches the bottom the stairs turn into a long corridor leading away from Luke.

Navigating it is going to take too long.

Vader plunges Luke’s lightsabre into the floor and carves a wide hole in it. A solid push with the Force loosens the metal circle from the grip of the molten metal around it and it thunders into the floor below. Vader deactivates the sabre and drops down into the space with a comparatively quiet clatter.

There are three sentinels in the room, and their hands light up and reach towards him.

Vader steps off the metal disk and throws it with the Force to bisect the closest sentinel. With a flick of his hands, the other two sentinels collide and wrap around each other until they are impossible to tell apart. The sound of metal shearing through metal peaks in a crescendo but then fades as the power driving the sentinels together welds them together in an overwhelming display of heat and friction. Glowing slightly along their seams, the sentinels fall to the floor in a heavy heap.

Vader staggers slightly after such an immense use of the Force. But he can’t afford to falter now, not when he is so close.

The Force bond with Luke directs him out of the room and down another staircase. The ice thins out and the damage from the weather fades, but Vader pays it the bare minimum of attention. He can feel Luke below him, his shielding growing weaker and weaker as he focuses more of his attention on surviving the sentinel. There isn’t much time left. Vader ploughs through some detritus left in a corridor, metal and unidentifiable objects colliding with the walls as he speeds past.

A sharp hiss through the Force makes Vader duck under a slashing arm of metal, impossible to see in the darkness of the underground but vivid through the Force. Vader pushes the sentinel with the Force into a nearby wall and it bashes through it with a _boom_ , the thin metal wall crumpling under the strain.

Behind it is a large empty space and hot air rushes through the hole to twist around Vader’s cape. A second later the sentinel hits the ground and the noise of it echoes through the enclosed spaces. Vader steps through the hole and drops, the Force aiding his descent.

Vader lands, turns through one last archway, and there is Luke.

He’s ripping a disembodied hand off his shoulder and skirting around what looks like the top half of a vaporator, which has impaled a sentinel to the floor. It still claws weakly at him, but Luke’s eyes are on the other end of the corridor, past what a circle of light illuminates from beyond an archway, down in the other direction of Vader. Luke backs up until he is almost within Vader’s reach.

Down the other end of the corridor, four glowing hands detach themselves from the darkness and approach.

Vader reaches out and grabs his son’s shoulder. Luke startles, suppressing a gasp, but Vader only moves Luke behind him and stalks towards the new threats.

“Stay behind me,” Vader instructs, and for once Luke seems disinclined to argue with him.

With a flick of Luke’s lightsabre, Vader slices off the hand of the impaled sentinel as he strides past. He crosses through the circle of light from the archway, his shadow a writhing thing against the rough walls of the corridor, darting this way and that opposing the swing of the green lightsabre.

The two new sentinels approach as a united front. Vader swipes at one of the hands but another lashes out and closes around the blade, melting the hand but holding the sabre steady in a pile of molten metal.

Vader lets the sentinel have it and blocks another hand throwing hot beads of slag at him. The Force swells and the beads rain down on either side of Vader, splattering against the floor and glowing like dying stars.

By now Luke’s lightsabre has cut through most of the hand holding it, and Vader gives it a push with the Force to finish the job. The sabre flies back into Vader’s hand and the time for defence is over.

This is taking too long. Vader grows weary of dealing with sentinels.

With a single powerful stroke, Vader carves a deep gouge through both sentinels that sprays metal across the wall. He strikes again, another long lash of green taking out a hand and the strike carries through the wall as well. Vader hacks at the sentinels with an unrestrained fury until there is no recognisable form left in the mounds of glowing metal.

Finally, drenched in red-hot sprays of metal, chest heaving slightly as his respirator struggles to keep up with the oxygen demand, Vader turns around to look back at Luke.

He’s staring back at Vader with wide eyes, his flesh hand clutched protectively over his chest. Vader spies the binders dangling from it. Luke’s other hand holds onto the wall like it’s the only thing keeping him upright, or maybe he’s hoping to hide behind it somehow to protect himself from Vader.

Vader probably looks like some sort of monster, standing there in the desecrated corridor, covered in the inorganic viscera of his fallen foes. Vader glances at Luke’s lightsabre in his hand, glowing away, and deactivates it.

The action triggers something in Luke, and Vader feels him gather himself and sprint away. Vader reaches out and, with a thought, sends a tendril of the Force towards the binders still hanging around Luke’s wrist.

Luke stops short suddenly, pulled back by the binders, and he tugs ineffectually at them while he is dragged back to Vader’s side.

“I told you not to run,” Vader chides, waiting while Luke is dragged through the white light from the archway. He scrambles to grip onto the vaporator but Vader’s grip on the binders is stronger.

“You said you wanted me alive to regret what I did to your lightsabre,” Luke grits out as he comes close enough for Vader to reach out and snap his other hand back in the binders. “I’m not gonna do that out there in that snow!”

“If you had not run,” Vader replies in a clipped tone, “we would be on a shuttle to _The Executor_ as we speak.”

That was almost certainly true. The storm had only worsened recently. If Vader had been just a bit faster, or just a bit stronger…

Luke yanks on the binders but Vader’s grip is inviolable.

A sharp flash of pain transmits over the bond.

Vader sends a concerned probe across the bond but Luke stubbornly raises his shields.

“Are you injured?”

Luke says nothing.

Vader drags Luke over to the light where he can see him properly. With a quick tug of the Force, the glowrod jumps into Vader’s hand. Luke winces when Vader brings it up over his head. It’s bright at such a short distance.

Luke looks like a sentinel dragged him down the corridor. His flight suit is ripped to shreds, there’s blood on his hands and knees, and there’s a painful looking burn in the shape of a hand sitting on his hip. The smell of singed hair wafts off him. Luke also appears to be favouring one foot over the other, if the way he’s standing is any indication.

He’s injured, but most of the wounds look superficial. The worst is the burn on his side but he can walk.

It was folly to leave him alone with any number of sentinels lurking about. Vader won’t make the same mistake again.

Luke tries once more to jerk away from Vader’s grip but Vader maintains a steady hold on his wrist, an area that seems miraculously free of injury compared to the rest of him.

“Enough of this,” Vader spits. “You cannot escape your destiny. You cannot escape _me_. We are returning to the surface.”

Vader hauls Luke along behind him as he retraces his steps. But Luke does not follow as sedately as he did in the sculpture garden. Luke _growls_ , and twists, and kicks at Vader’s legs. He manages to hit Vader’s damaged knee joint and his leg buckles. Vader stumbles, but it isn’t enough to make him loosen his grip.

“ _We_ aren’t going anywhere, because I’m not going anywhere with _you_ ,” Luke spits, and digs his heels in.

A loud _crash_ echoes from up ahead.

It’s quickly joined by two, then three more.

Sentinels. Six of them, descending to this level in very much the same way Vader did. By the way Luke freezes, he’s recognised the sound isn’t good as well.

Abruptly, Vader turns around and tugs Luke in the other direction.

“What,” Luke grits out, stumbling along next to Vader, “not going to tell me to stay here while you fight them?”

Vader doesn’t reply.

Through the swaying light from the glowrod in his free hand, Vader spots the wide grin flash across Luke’s face.

“You can’t fight them and keep me here at the same time,” Luke deduces, and something sparks through their bond for a moment. It takes Vader a second to decode the feeling as Luke’s own breed of _spite_. “We wouldn’t the hooded figures to-” Luke takes a deep breath- “KNOW WHERE WE ARE-”

Vader sticks the glowrod on his belt and clamps his hand over Luke’s mouth. Luke struggles, naturally, so Vader wraps his other arm around him to keep him still. Hauled almost off his feet, the only sounds Luke can make now are the scuffs of his boots against the metal floor.

The setup works until the corridor opens up into a vast tunnel. Vader’s awareness grows of a pressure building on his hand, and he realises Luke is trying to bite through his glove.

Stopping for a moment in the cavernous darkness, Vader grabs Luke by both of his shoulders and levels him with a glare. He must look menacing with the light from the glowrod beneath him, and Vader forces as much writhing anger and frustration through the bond as he can muster.

Despite the stifling heat in the air, Luke shivers.

“ _Stop fighting me_.” Vader hisses, shaking Luke slightly. “You have _lost_. You’re only going to injure yourself further.”

Luke flicks his head to move some of his sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes. He glares right back at Vader.

“Haven’t you figured it out yet? I’m never going to stop fighting you. _Never_.”

Never more than now does Vader wish Luke had inherited more of his mother. Because this stubbornness, this steadfast refusal to admit defeat and instead fight until his very last drop of blood, against all reason, this was very much inherited from his father.

Not that his mother wasn’t just as stubborn. But she always had the wisdom to move around obstacles instead of trying to force her way through them.

Vader sighs, and the sound carries through the vocoder like a slightly longer breath. He lifts a finger to Luke’s forehead and presses gently against his temple.

“ _Sleep_.” Vader imbues the word with a powerful Force suggestion.

Luke’s knees give way and his eyelids flutter shut.

Finally.

Vader holds him upright as his presence softens through their bond.

Luke’s eyes snap back open.

“ _No_.”

Luke’s gaze unerringly finds Vader’s despite the red lenses between them. Luke’s presence sharpens to an almost overwhelming intensity through the bond and Vader feels his own Force suggestion thrown back at him.

The power of the suggestion is almost crippling. It’s been years since Vader last suffered under the onslaught of another strong Force user, and Luke’s strength takes him by surprise.

It shouldn’t. Luke is his son, after all.

Vader pushes back with a renewed intensity and he feels Luke falter for a second before rallying himself and continuing. Vader can practically see the Force in the air between them, singing like two orchestras clashing against each other in an immense duet.

The metal cracks beneath them. A rain of dust and metal fragments comes down from above to show the same is happening to the ceiling. The light from the glowrod dims, like the darkness around them has settled in to watch the spectacle.

Vader’s hand begins to shake from the strain.

And in another moment, there is another Force explosion.

Vader’s knee gives out again and he collapses to the floor, his armour scraping against the surface and throwing white sparks into the air. He rolls once before digging his hand into the floor and righting himself.

Luke fairs worse, the explosion throwing him out of the glowrod’s light and onto his back a few metres away. Vader’s lenses can make out his shape lying unmoving on the metal.

Dragging his useless leg behind him, Vader limps to Luke and bends down over him.

He’s dazed from the explosion and utterly exhausted from using the Force to that extent, but he doesn’t seem any more injured than before. His shields slide away and Vader senses the dull throb of his pains, as well as his confusion and misery and- is that a thin thread of relief?

There’s no time to prob further as the Force rings out a harsh warning. Turning away from Luke, Vader watches the tunnel light up with pairs of glowing hands. First a few just a dozen metres away, but then more and more, all the way down the length of the tunnel until they disappear around a bend. Vader doesn’t have to look down the other direction to know he’ll be greeted with the same sight.

There must be at least fifty of them down here.

Vader activates Luke’s lightsabre.

“You know what?” Luke says breathlessly, the words small and sharp as he takes in the scene around him, “I think I’ve changed my mind about the lesser of the two evils.”

A faint memory makes itself known across the bond. It’s the path Luke took to get here.

Vader glances down at him. “You’ll show me a way out?”

Luke grunts and tries to lift himself up. Just before he falls back down, Vader is there to put an arm behind his back. “Just to stop you getting us killed trying to fight all these hooded figures.”

Luke had surprised Vader again. There was a wisdom in him, buried deep, and that definitely didn’t come from Vader.

“Very well.” Vader concedes. He hefts Luke up easily under one arm. If his son was any less fatigued he would complain, but it shows just how the last few minutes had drained him. “Direct us to the surface. I will fend off any sentinel that tries to follow.”

Through the bond, Luke nudges Vader towards the far wall of the tunnel. With the Force cushioning his leg, and his hands wrapped tight around both Luke and Luke’s lightsabre, Vader lunges for the exit.


End file.
